I have a solid source saying that "Apollo 13 was more like Apollo 113," and that we shot all kinds of people at the Moon and they all died, the government didn't want to admit it because it was such a tragedy and a waste of human life and tax dollars, but they were doing it anyways because of the importance of the mission.

Now, was that importance the ongoing cold war with Russia, or was it related to our having successfully stolen alien tech at Roswell and other opportunities?

That I don't know.

I don't know if we succeeded in the Moon landing eventually or if the success was just a propaganda film to make it feel less like we wasted a bunch of money on nothing, or if the "accomplishment of landing on the Moon" was just a gigantic cover for an operation to go up there and fetch something.

It would be nice to have answers.